


Family Affairs

by bissek



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Covert Affairs, Mission: Impossible (TV 1966)
Genre: Crossover, Espionage, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Two Compliant, Marvel Universe, Recruitment Drive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4502505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bissek/pseuds/bissek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the series by Afalstein. Good evening, Mr. Collier. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to convince SHIELD to stop recruiting agents from the IMF.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Family Matters

 

Agent Triplett drove down the street. The safe house was only a couple blocks away. Once he was there, he could grab a few things stored there that they weren't well stocked with at the Playground and drive away. A simple mission. It shouldn't take him more than ten minutes once he got there, so long as whoever was tracking down SHIELD's safe houses and looting them hadn't gotten there first. Unfortunately, when he arrived, it was clear that someone had already gotten there. A large van was parked outside the safe house and two men were tampering with the lock.

 

"That should do it, Ethan." The dark skinned man said to his partner.

 

"Good," The other man said with a satisfied smile on his face. "Now let's get to it. SHIELD's taken enough from us over the years. It's time that we got something back."

 

Triplett decided that the mission was a bust. Grabbing a camera, he snapped a picture of the two men and then drove away. Hopefully the picture would help SHIELD figure out who was raiding their supply caches.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"Got it," Skye reported as her computer declared a match. "The man on the right in this picture is Ethan Hunt, one of the top operations men in the Impossible Missions Force."

 

"The IMF?" Coulson asked. "What do they have against SHIELD? If what Triplett reported was true, there's some sort of institutional grudge in play here. In any case, better send a message to Reese warning him about the raids. He might want to move the supplies in the safe house we gave him to some other location."

 

"Will do, AC. Hold on, Northern Lights is sending us a number." Skye looked up the Social Security Number. "Barney Collier. Former owner of Collier Electronics, then an engineer assigned to field work for the IMF, now retired. The man's old enough to be my grandfather. What does the Machine think we can do with him? Does it think he can replace Fitz?" There was a sober pause. "Does it think we're going to _need_ to replace Fitz?"

 

Before they could contemplate that possibility for too long, Coulson's phone rang.

 

"Hello, Phil," Root said on the other end of the line, "I was told to let you know that the person she's brought to your attention has the answers to some questions that you had."

 

The two agents stared at the phone as Root hung up.

 

"That sort of thing is going to take a while to get used to." Coulson noted.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Barney Collier disengaged the complex electronic lock he had designed and installed on his rooms at the retirement home. It was a long way from his glory days, when he had built the world's first chess computer capable of matching a grandmaster, outwitted dozens of despots, spies and criminals and become the middleweight boxing champion of the world (A title he arguably still had more than forty-five years later - since only a handful of people knew who had really been in the ring that night, nobody had ever challenged him for it), but an old man had to find his amusements somewhere.

 

He was surprised to find that his home wasn't empty. A man was standing in the far corner of the room.

 

"Good evening, Mr. Collier." The man said.

 

Barney smiled at the long familiar phrasing "I think I'm a little old for missions nowadays. How did you get in here, anyway? I designed that lock myself."

 

"And it was a good one, too. It took my hacker nearly an hour to bypass it. Finding a place she could work on it without drawing attention to herself was quite a challenge." Barney turned and noticed a young woman working on a laptop, which he noted was not connected to his own computer in any way. "Let me introduce myself. I'm Phil Coulson, of SHIELD, and this is Agent Skye."

 

"SHIELD." Barney's eyes narrowed. "What would the world's most infamous secret agency want with an old man who's been out of the game for twenty years?"

 

"We had our bad eggs, just like everyone else. Didn't you once work directly for a traitor?" The girl asked.

 

" _Don't talk that way about Jim!_ " Barney snapped.

 

"But he did try to sell out hundreds of agents throughout the world for money." Coulson pointed out. "I've been betrayed by friends in this business, too."

 

Barney forced himself to calm down. "So what do you want with me?"

 

"I'm sure you've noticed that ever since HYDRA's involvement in Project Insight was exposed, every government that used to back SHIELD has since disavowed us and are trying to annex all of our resources that they can get their hands on. One agency is definitely standing out in the fervor in which they are doing so: the IMF. It's clear that this is personal for them, not just for the agents involved, but the agency a whole.

 

"I came to ask you one question: Why does the IMF hate SHIELD so much? Given how limited our resources are at the moment, we can't afford to waste any of them dealing with a vendetta from another organization while we're trying to deal with HYDRA."

 

Barney laughed. "You mean to tell me that after everything SHIELD has done to us over the past fifty years you honestly don't know?"

 

"I've been searching our archives for weeks, and I haven't been able to find any evidence that SHIELD and the IMF have ever worked together." The hacker pointed out.

 

"That's because SHIELD never worked with anyone, they just threw their weight around and forced everyone else to go along with it." Barney closed his eyes as he recalled his first encounter with SHIELD. "When I was first recruited into the IMF, I was assigned to the team of a man named Dan Briggs. The five of us - Me, Dan, Rollin Hand, Cinnamon Carter, and Willy Armitage - were sent to handle situations all over the world. Extracting defectors, stopping biowarfare attacks, shutting down organized crime, just about any kind of crisis you can imagine. We saved the world more times in one year than James Bond did in his best decade of movies. We even stopped a few attempts to revive the Nazis." From the look Coulson's face, he'd been getting cracks of that nature all too often recently.

 

"Then, after about a year, Dan vanished from the IMF and was replaced by Jim Phelps. No explanation was given for what happened to Dan. Then two years later Rollin was pulled from the team and was replaced with Paris. After that, pretty much every year had the team losing a member that we'd have to replace. Willy and I were the only members of the original team who were still around eight years later.

 

"It took a while, but I eventually found out what happened to all my teammates. SHIELD decided they could use them, and strong-armed our superiors into transferring them. We were hardly the only team you were poaching from, but we were the one that got hit the most often. Sometimes I think that the only reason I never got grabbed was because back then you had Howard Stark on call - there was no reason to annex the world's second best engineer when you already had the best. You _did_ try to grab my son in the early nineties, but Grant flat out told them that if he wasn't left alone he'd resign from the IMF and then raise a huge stink in the press about SHIELD trying to coerce private citizens into working for them."

 

"I remember a Dan Briggs. He was an instructor back when I was a trainee at the Operations Academy." Coulson noted. "So the start of the dispute was SHIELD habitually hiring your best people away from you?"

 

"You weren't just taking people away! We were more than teams, we were _family_. Even if there wasn't an official mission, if one of us needed help, everyone else would come, no questions asked. We once traveled to South America to run an off-the-books mission to help a friend of Jim's that the rest of us had never met just because he asked us to. When Cinnamon was captured during a mission, we all knew that our superiors would disavow her and order us to leave her behind, but we worked out a way to get her back before they had the opportunity to do so. When my brother was murdered, the entire team dropped everything to help me take down the man responsible. SHIELD wasn't just forcing us to continually rebuild our teams if we wanted to get anything done, it was shattering our families over and over again, forcing us to pick up the pieces and try to recover before it happened to us again.

 

"Sometimes I wonder: If Rollin and Cinnamon hadn't been taken away, along with their replacements, could we have stopped the downward spiral that caused Jim to go rogue? Maybe he felt that he had no reason to be loyal to people who couldn't even protect his team from their so-called allies.

 

"Tell me, have you ever had a team be that close, Agent Coulson?"

 

The two SHIELD agents exchanged a glance. "We were trying on our last team," Coulson admitted. "Then one of us turned out to be HYDRA. We're still picking up the pieces.

 

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Collier. I will be adding the process of how we requisition aid from other agencies to the list of thing we're going to overhaul as we rebuild."

 

"And you think you can get your superiors to listen?"

 

Coulson smiled slightly. "Yes."

 

Skye looked up from her laptop. "I just looked into the names you mentioned. Agent Briggs is dead - he was visiting the Academy to give a guest lecture when HYDRA attacked, and was killed while executing a plan he came up with to get the trainees clear. Nearly three-quarters of the students made it out because of him. Agents Hand and Carter are retired.

 

"I've sent the location of Briggs' grave and the contact information for your other colleagues to your computer. I can't give you back the time you lost, sir, but I can give you an opportunity to see your family one last time. It's a good thing that your friend had such an unusual first name - there have been _lots_ of Agent Carters in SHIELD, dating all the way back to the SSR in World War Two, but only one Cinnamon."

 

If true, it was a simple gesture of good faith, but it touched Barney nonetheless. "Thank you, miss."

 

Coulson added one more item. "If your friend Rollin is related to the late Agent Victoria Hand, please let him know that her killer is in custody, and won't be going anywhere for quite some time."

 

Rollin had never mentioned a relative named Victoria to Barney, but since it had been more than forty years since they'd last spoken, it was possible that she simply hadn't existed at the time. "I'll do that, Agent Coulson."

 

After the two had left, Barney powered up his computer, and found an email containing the information he was promised. After spending a couple days verifying the information, he called up an old friend.

 

"Willy? It's Barney. I just got some news about Dan, Rollin and Cinnamon. Are you up to attending a family reunion?"

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A month after Agent Coulson met with Barney Collier, a package was left on the grave of Daniel Briggs, former agent of SHIELD and the IMF. Suspecting that it was a dead drop, Colonel Talbot of the US Air Force ordered the package seized the moment he learned of it. After the package was carefully scanned to ensure it could be opened safely, it was found to contain an envelope and an old tape recorder. As the forensics team opened the envelope to find a picture of three men and a woman, all of whom were easily in their seventies or eighties, the tape was played and copied.

 

"Good morning, Mr. Briggs," A man's voice said. "The people you are looking at are your old teammates, reunited one last time to say farewell to a friend and colleague."

 

"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to rest in peace," A second man joined in, "Others will take on the duties you so ably performed in life."

 

"Though your country has disavowed you, know that we never will." A woman added.

 

"This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." A fourth voice said. "Good-bye, Dan."

 

Before anyone could stop the tape, it started to smoke. Within seconds, it was nothing but ash.

 

Talbot's men wasted over a hundred man hours looking into the copy of the tape and the photograph, convinced that there had to be something more to them than a rather unusual way of paying one's respect to a fallen comrade. They never found anything.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A/N: The idea for this came while working on my other Recruitment Drive fic. SHIELD was at the top of the intelligence community and knew it, so they probably did run roughshod over the others at time, which would generate resentment. This story also explains why virtually every season of Mission: Impossible has a major character be replaced with no in-universe explanation for this.

 

I was halfway through this before I remembered that SHIELD really does have agents with the last names of Hand and Carter, though their methods of operation have nothing in common with how the MI Hand and Carter worked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good morning, Mr. Hand. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to break the man who murdered your daughter, Victoria.

"We just got a message from Gideon," Koenig said to Coulson. "Apparently Ward is talking. Well, talking might be stretching it. Croaking semi-intelligibly might be more accurate."

 

"Has he gotten anything out of him?"

 

"Unfortunately, no. Ward is now capable of communicating somewhat, but he has yet to say anything of importance. Breaking him is likely to take some time."

 

"A pity. We could use the information he has on HYDRA's facilities. Unfortunately, all our with interrogation skills are currently busy elsewhere at the moment and can't be spared."

 

There was a pair of beeps on Koenig's tablet. Koenig looked down.

 

"Let's see. One message is from Agent Root. It simply says 'Ask him.' The other is a nine digit number." The two men exchanged looks.

 

"As useful as the Machine can be, that doesn't make it any less disturbing when it does things like that. Who's the number?"

 

"Let's see... The number belongs to Rollin Hand, a former actor and stage magician who joined the IMF and was later recruited into SHIELD, now retired. Master of disguise, expert in sleight of hand, dozens of high profile interrogations completed... and father of the late Agent Victoria Hand."

 

Coulson smiled. "Why don't we ask him if he's interested in a little payback on her killer?"

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Rollin Hand, the Man of a Thousand Faces, sighed as he flipped through the old photo album. This was all that he had left of his daughter now. When the news about HYDRA broke out, he had worried about her fate, as any father whose only child was in the middle of a war zone would. He certainly didn't expect that the first news he would get of her fate would be a secondhand message that her killer had been caught. He still didn't know who had killed her, the circumstances around her death, or where she was buried.

 

That discovery had put a serious damper on the pleasure of being reunited with his old teammates one last time, even more than the harassment he and all the others received from the Air Force after they left their little tribute on Dan's grave. In fact, Talbott's efforts at interrogation had been more amusing than terrifying. Rollin and the others had invented more ways of breaking a man than the self-righteous Colonel had ever dreamed of - on one occasion they had even tricked a man into interrogating _himself_ to the breaking point. All Talbott's petty bullying had accomplished was to give Rollin something to think about other than his recent loss.

There was a knock at the door. Rollin ignored it. The knocking continued. Rollin rose with a groan and made his way to the door. On the other side was an Asian woman.

 

"Rollin Hand?" She asked. "My name's Melinda May. May I come in?"

  
"No." Rollin started to close the door.

  
May's hand shot out and grabbed the door frame. "It's about your daughter."  


Rollin let the woman in. "So," He asked, as they sat down, "What do you have to do with my daughter?"  


"I used to work with her." Which meant she was SHIELD, of course, but right now Rollin couldn't really care. "I brought in the man responsible for her death. I thought you should hear what had happened from someone who had been there, at least, someone as close as possible to being there."  


Rollin nodded. "Go on."  


"I don't have to tell you that your daughter was loyal." She began. "The day Hydra came out, she secured our main base from the HYDRA agents who had been inserted into the security forces. In the process, she captured a high-level HYDRA agent, John Garrett, also known as the Clairvoyant."  


"The old phony psychic routine?" Rollin asked.  


"You've seen that?"  


"It's not exactly a new trick. Have someone claim they can predict the future, while having a couple guys sneaking around ensuring the predictions come true until the mark believes it. Operations men have been using that scheme for at least fifty years now."  


"It was a... bit more involved than that." May winced. "He'd used his SHIELD access to convince his criminal underlings he was omniscient. A huge thorn in our side. Your daughter decided to transport Garrett to the Fridge herself. One of Garrett's former protégés, an Agent Grant Ward, offered to be part of the guard detail on the flight. We all thought that he was disgusted with his mentor's treachery and wanted to personally see the man punished." May looked away. "It wasn't until much later that we realized that Garrett had recruited Ward into HYDRA long before arranging for him to attend the SHIELD Academy. While we don't know exactly what happened on that flight, only two people who were on that flight were ever seen again - John Garrett, and Grant Ward."  


Rollin closed his eyes. For a moment there was silence. "You said you captured them." He said at last, eyes still closed. "Why haven't you questioned them?"  


"Garrett is dead now. Quite dead. They had to clean up what was left of him with a mop and bury him in a bucket. As for Ward, I'm afraid I had to crush his larynx while subduing him." May's mouth twitched in what Rollin assumed was the woman's version of a smile. "He only regained the ability to speak a few days ago. So far, the interrogator the US Government has working him over at the prison he's currently held at hasn't been able to get anything out of him."

  
Rollin narrowed his eyes. "Could you get me a copy of his file? I've broken quite a few men over the years. I suppose I could come out of retirement to break one more."

  
May looked thoughtful. "It might be possible. I'll have to ask my superiors." She rose. "I'll contact you in a few days when I have the answer."

  
Two days later, May was back, bearing with her a pair of profiles. "One of them is Ward's original profile, from when we considered him a loyal agent." She said. "It's accurate, but obviously it's incomplete. The second file is what we've managed to glean since then." May frowned. "It's... not much to go on."

  
"I've worked with less." Rollins looked up with an almost hungry smile after flipping through both files. "I can do this, but I'm going to need a few things. First, I'll need the cooperation of the warden of the prison Ward is being held in and his official interrogator, unless you're willing to break him out so we can do this totally in-house."

  
"That won't be necessary." May shook her head. "We have an inside man."

  
"Your doctor Gideon?" Rollins asked. May inclined her head. "Don't have him mention my history with SHIELD - my old IMF credentials will probably get us farther at this point. Second, I'll need front and profile photographs of Andrew Ward, and Leo Fitz, along with recordings of the voices of Susan Ward, Timothy Ward, and Leo Fitz."

  
"What sorts of recordings?" May looked faintly confused.  


"It doesn't matter what they're saying, so long as there's enough data to get a solid voiceprint." Rollins waved his hand dismissively. "Finally, I'll need the assistance of your Agent Skye."

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"Grant, help!" A young boy called out.

 

"Grant, help!" The boy called out, with a hint of a Scottish accent.

 

"Grant, help!" The accent became stronger.

 

Again and again the voice called out, with each time the accent getting stronger until it became the voice of Leo Fitz.

 

Rollin stopped playing the sound files. "Excellent. And you have these for all the various lines I scripted?"

 

Skye nodded. "Both the ones for the age-regressed voice of Ward's little brother and Fitz, and the ones for the age-regressed voice of Ward's sister and myself."

 

"The hidden speakers?"

 

"They're going to be planted in Ward's cell the next time he's taken out for interrogation." Doctor Gideon reported.

 

"Good. How about the well?"

 

"It's being dug, but it won't be ready for another week or so."

 

"That's alright. I won't be needing it until it's time for the endgame, which is going to take at least three weeks to set up."

 

"I still don't get how this is going to break Ward." Skye protested.

 

"Young lady," Rollin lectured, "Over the decades, people have gotten more and more enamored with toys and have forgotten that the lynchpin of all intelligence work is the _people_. If you know how people think, you can predict how they'll react to a given situation. And if you then control their understanding of what is going on, you can get them to do absolutely anything, and they won't even realize they're being manipulated until it's too late. The technology is a tool to guide your target into thinking what you want them to think. It is a part of the solution, not the entire solution. The ultimate example of this is the long game HYDRA played on SHIELD. They pulled their manipulations off on entire countries on a generational scale, and they almost got away with it - if Fury had been a little easier to kill, it might have worked. But they became too enamored of how powerful Insight would make them when they got it running that they underestimated Fury's paranoia, which kept him alive long enough to warn Captain America and provide him with the means to shut Insight down. Because they failed to control one man at the wrong moment, their ultimate weapon was ultimately useless.

 

"That might be the real reason that SHIELD recruited from the IMF so often. We _always_ worked on that principle, so HYDRA must have wanted to keep a close eye on as many of the people who understood their playbook as possible.

 

"In this case, we're going to remind Ward of his childhood. Both versions of his profile agree that this is what shaped the man he is today, even they disagree as to how. We'll get him thinking about what made him who he is today, and then we'll shove a reminder of where life has brought him down his throat."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Grant Ward sat in his cell. He didn't know how long he'd been there. He never got to look out a window to see if it was day or night, the rooms he was allowed to see were always illuminated, the guards he saw were always the same, and the meals were always identical - a murky broth that occasionally varied slightly in consistency, since his throat injury meant that he wasn't allowed solid food. This was deliberate on the part of his jailors. Depriving prisoners of a sense of the passage of time was a traditional part of interrogation techniques.

 

There was a good chance that his last meal only been served an hour or so ago, but he started to eat anyway - since the guards fed him at random times, his next meal could be twenty hours from now. Picking up the flimsy plastic spoon (Chosen for its utter uselessness as a weapon in the event that he wanted to try a breakout), he slowly slurped up the broth. After finishing his meal, he laid down on the cot and tried to sleep. It was entirely possible that the guards would wake him up in half an hour just to mess with him, but he needed to at least try to rest.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After Ward fell asleep, the door to his cell opened. Rollin entered with a makeup kit, made a few subtle changes to the prisoner's face, and then left.

 

"Why didn't you just completely make over his face in one go?" Captain Anderson, the interrogator assigned to Ward, asked him after he left.

 

"The alterations I'm making are hardly weightless. If I do it all at once, he might realize that his head is several ounces heavier than it was when he went to sleep. I need to do it gradually so that he doesn't figure out that I'm constructing a mask on top of his real face."

 

"And this will break him?"

 

"Eventually. Now, next time you interrogate him, make sure to remind him of his family. Don't make them a major point in the interrogation, just casually bring them up and move on to the next topic. And continue to do that every second or third session after that."

 

"Are you sure this is going to do anything?"

 

"Captain, do you how many thousands of people who died when the Russians introduced botulism into every major reservoir in California back in the mid-sixties? Or how many millions died from a submarine launched nuclear missile strike three and a half years later?"

 

"None, they never happened."

 

"Exactly. But if you check with the Navy and Homeland Security, you will find records proving that they were attempted. This is not my first interrogation, Captain. I know what I'm doing. Just go along with the plan, and make sure he doesn't see anything reflective until it's time for the endgame."

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Grant was thrown back into his cell after another fruitless interrogation. Knowing the routine, he sat down on the cot, waiting for the guards to decide it was time to either feed him again or interrogate him again.

 

Time passes slowly when have absolutely nothing to do and no way to mark its passage. It could have been ten minutes from when he was returned to his cell, or three hours, he couldn't tell. But after a while, he thought he could hear a faint splashing sound. It gradually grew clearer, until he thought he could hear a voice as well.

 

"lp!" The voice said.

 

"nt, help!" It came a little clearer.

 

"Grant, help!" It came a third time, just loud enough for him to make out the words, and then it faded out.

 

"Timothy?" Grant croaked. Then he shook his head. It must have been his imagination.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Watching from a security camera, Rollin looked at Ward's reaction and nodded with satisfaction. Then he carefully programmed an alarm clock to alert him in two hours and thirteen minutes and pulled out a book. When the alarm went off, it would be time to play the first of the sister clips.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Weeks passed. Rollin played the recordings of Grant's siblings in distress at random times, gradually transitioning to the versions that used the voices of his former comrades in the process. Every few days, the guards would drug the broth sufficiently to ensure that Ward would sleep soundly, at which point Rollin would add another layer to the disguise he was slowly adding to his face.

 

Rollin and Anderson watched as Ward became twitchier and twitchier about the voices he heard in his cell. Then one day, Rollin turned to his colleague. "It's time. The penultimate stage is to be done tonight. Give Ward this drug in his soup an hour after sunset. Once he's asleep, have the guards change his clothing and take him to the clearing I've had prepared.

 

"Meet me here at sunset so I can prepare you and an extra for your parts. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to mix some stage blood and prepare your makeup. Don't worry about your lines, I had them pre-recorded almost a month ago."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ward opened his eyes blearily. As his vision focused, he saw that he wasn't in his cell. He was in a clearing. How had he gotten here?

 

"Grant..." A girl's voice called out in pain. His sister's voice.

 

"Grant... Why did you do that...?"

 

A dream. It must be a dream of how his brother Andrew had abused his siblings, and had forced him to participate.

 

"Why did you let him do that...?"

 

The voice was coming from nearby. Ward turned sluggishly and saw a body lying on the ground. As he moved closer to it, the body rolled over, and he could see its face. It wasn't Susan's.

 

"Why, Grant?" Skye asked. "Why did you let him do this to me?"

 

Ward stared with horror at the body of his former trainee, covered in blood the way she was the day that Quinn nearly killed her. As her weak voice continued to demand an explanation, he stepped back, trying to avoid the accusations. Then he heard the splashing, and the voice of his brother Timothy begging for rescue the way he had the day that Andrew had dropped him down the well. As he turned around, he saw that there was a well, and that the sounds were coming from there.

 

Shakily, Ward looked down into the well, and as he did, the voice changed from that of an American boy to a Scottish man. The person in the well wasn't Timothy Ward. It was Leo Fitz.

 

"Ward! Aren't we friends? Why did you do this?" Fitz plead as he struggled to stay above the water.

 

"Please Ward, help! _Help!_ " Fitz's pleas faded out as his stamina gave out and he slid under.

 

Ward stared at the bubbles slowly forming on the dark surface of the water in the well. Then there was a sharp pain in his shoulder and he blacked out.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

After Ward dropped from the tranquilizer dart in his shoulder, Skye got up off the ground and dusted herself off.

 

"Is that it?" She asked.

 

Rollin approached from a distance, accompanied by one of the prison guards. "Almost." Walking to the well, he called out "You can get out now, Captain."

 

Fitz's head popped out of the water, the air hose of a diving tank clenched between his teeth. After climbing out using a hidden ladder built into the side of the well, he reached around to the back of his neck and pulled off his mask, revealing the face of Captain Anderson.

 

"What's the next step?" He inquired.

 

"Now I put the finishing touches on his new face, we change him back into his old uniform, and we return him to his cell. When he wakes up, he'll think what he just saw was a dream. Make sure tomorrow's soup is nice and clear, so he can see his face in it." Rollin instructed.

 

"This should be interesting."

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ward slowly opened his eyes. What was that? Some sort of nightmare about his siblings and his former teammates? Looking around, he could see that he was still in his cell, as if nothing had ever happened. Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, Ward prepared himself for another day of broth and questioning.

 

Eventually, the door to his cell opened. The usual guards entered. One of them covered him while the other presented him with the usual tray containing a bowl of broth and a cheap spoon. Then they collected the tray from the previous meal and left. Ward picked up the spoon and looked down at the tray. The guards had slipped up. Today's broth was clearly a different recipe from the usual. It was clear enough that he could see his reflection in it.

 

 

It wasn't _his_ reflection.

 

Staring back at Grant was the face of his brother Andrew.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Captain Anderson listened to the moan of despair coming from the cell and knew that his subject had cracked.

 

"And that's it?" He asked.

 

"That's it." Rollin concurred. "He's just drawn the connection between what his brother did to him and his siblings and what he's done to others as an agent of HYDRA. Give him a little while to stew, then bring him in for questioning. Make to bring up how much harm his actions have done. Once you've gotten him talking for a while, you can drug him again and give him his old face back."

 

"Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Hand." Anderson, offering his hand.

 

"My pleasure, Captain." Rollin said, taking it. "Could you do one small favor for me in return?"

 

"What did you have in mind?" Anderson's voice was guarded, wondering what the price for breaking the HYDRA agent would be now that it was due.

 

"The day after HYDRA came out in the open, Agent Ward hijacked a prisoner transport delivering his immediate superior in HYDRA to a SHIELD holding facility. I want to know what happened to the guards and crew on that transport."

 

"The guards and crew? Why do you want to know about them?" That was an odd request. The other enemy agent would be a far more important person to track.

 

"My daughter was in command of that mission." Rollin said flatly. "I know it's probably too much to hope that she and the others are being held prisoner somewhere, but."

 

"You have to know," Anderson said, now understanding why the old man had volunteered to break Ward. "Alright, Mr. Hand. One way or the other, I will see to it that your daughter comes home."

 

"Thank you, Captain." Rollin shook his hand again and left the prison.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Two weeks later, Rollin was sitting down for breakfast when the phone rang.

 

"Mr. Hand?" Captain Anderson's voice said.

 

"Yes?" Rollin answered.

 

"A few days ago a team sent to verify a statement given by Agent Ward found a group of bodies. The DNA results just came back - one of the bodies is your daughter, Victoria Hand. I'm sorry."

 

Rollin bowed his head. "Thank you for letting me know."

 

"Are there any specific funeral arrangements you have in mind? It's already been decided that the people that Ward murdered on that flight are entitled to a burial with full honors at Arlington, if that's what would you like."

 

"Can I think about that for a bit?"

 

"Alright. You can call me back at this number."

 

Rollin wrote down the number, thanked the Captain again, and hung up.

 

And so it ended. His daughter's body had been found, and she would be remembered as a fallen hero, rather than a criminal. Her killer was being milked for the intelligence on his employers that the United States Government could squeeze out of him. His final mission, self-assigned as it was, was over.

 

Rollin paused. _Had_ his mission been self-assigned? Thinking back to the events of over a month before, he realized it hadn't been. SHIELD had _wanted_ him to break Ward, but if they'd just sent someone to ask him to do it, he would have responded angrily and demanded they leave. So instead May came as a sympathetic figure offering him some closure, and maneuvered him into _volunteering_ to break the man.

 

Rollin raised his coffee mug in salute. "Well, played, Agent May. Well played."

 

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A/N: This chapter was originally written for fanfiction.net between seasons 1 and 2 of AoS, while the nature of Ward's captivity was still up in the air and there were no canon names for Ward's brothers and sister at the time, so I made some up.

 

This does not necessarily mean that Ward is going to be redeemed, just that he's now being used as a source of intelligence. Personally, I think that any attempt to plausibly redeem Ward would require a long story arc to get him to want redemption, followed by an even longer one to get the rest of the cast to honestly believe that he's trying to make amends. After all, Ward is very good at playing a role, and his former teammates _know_ that he's very good at playing a role. They'd have to be complete idiots to look at a remorseful Ward and not think to themselves "How do I know he's not just playing another role?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good morning, Mr Armitage. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to discover who has compromised your former teammate Paris and how.

The man who in his youth was known as The Great Paris looked out at the intelligence officers in training.

 

"Playing a role is an important part of working undercover. But there are times when instead of convincing the world that you are somebody, it can be far more useful to convince it that you are _nobody_."

 

"I'm sure some of you thinking that it's not possible to be nobody, but that is hardly true." He continued. "There are people are people everywhere that are routinely ignored by virtually everyone they encounter. Some of these people have levels of access that by rights should make them very important in the eyes of security personnel, but despite this they are frequently overlooked.

 

"For example, a major security breach occurred in this very room while I was giving this lecture. Can anyone tell me what it was?"

 

There were a series of confused looks around the room. After a minute of this, Paris decided to take this as a no.

 

"Willy, can you come back in, please?" An old man dressed as a custodian walked into the room, slowly pushing his cart. Then he straightened up, and the trainees could see that he was very powerfully built, to the point where he could probably bench more than most of them weighed without any trouble.

 

"This is my old colleague, Willy Armitage, former champion weightlifter and retired agent of the IMF." Paris said. "When this lecture started, he was in the back of the room, dusting. While your attention was on me, he lifted a packet of papers from my desk and planted a hidden microphone. And none of you noticed him doing it, because you thought that a janitor wasn't worth your attention.

 

"These are the invisible people of the world, ladies and gentlemen. Common laborers. Janitors, repairmen, waitresses, secretaries. They're everywhere, and most people in positions of authority don't pay any attention to them unless they specifically need their services at that moment, or are inconvenienced by something they are doing. During his time with the IMF, all we ever needed to do to make Willy completely invisible was give him a tool belt and some coveralls.

 

"This is the origin of the now excessively overdone concept of 'the butler did it'. The servants to those in power can go anywhere, but those in power don't pay any attention to them. That is the subject of today's lesson: How to appear so unimportant that nobody thinks that you're worth the effort of noticing."

 

Paris continued his lecture, with Willy demonstrating the various discussed methods on how to be inconspicuous. Hopefully the officers in training would be paying sufficient attention to truly notice what Willy was doing. Teaching people how to be ignored can be a difficult exercise.

 

After the lesson was ended, Paris and Willy left the classroom. At the far end of the hall they walked down, a group of electricians were doing something with the wiring. A couple wires were crossed at the wrong moment, and sparks started flying. Paris saw the lights start flickering rapidly and then his mind went blank.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Annie Walker entered the Director's office.

 

"You asked to see me, Ma'am?" She asked.

 

"Yes I did, Agent Walker." Director Campbell handed over a folder. "The man you're looking at is Agent Paris, formerly of the IMF and SHIELD. He retired from active service long before HYDRA's survival became public knowledge, and was cleared of any suspicion of being in their employ some time ago. He occasionally gives lectures at the Farm on disguises and maintaining cover identities.

 

"Yesterday, after one of his lectures, a lighting accident caused him to enter a strange trance, in which he was disturbingly suggestible. Once he came out of it, we arranged for him to get a checkup."

 

As Annie flipped past the dossier to see a medical report and a chemical analysis, the Director continued. "In his bloodstream we found a buildup of a totally unknown drug, which our analysts in the Science and Technology division believe to be some new kind of hypnotic. They also found trace quantities of this drug in his arthritis medication.

 

"S&T believes that in order to have reached the buildup found in his blood, Paris would have had to have been taking doctored pills for years. We need you to figure out who's behind this and what they're trying to accomplish. A former partner of Agent Paris' from the IMF - one Willy Armitage - has volunteered to help in any way he can if you think he'd be of use. We've already checked and he hasn't been exposed to this mystery drug. You'll find his dossier at the bottom of the folder."

 

"Yes, Ma'am." Annie left the Director's office, taking the folder with her.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A week later, Annie looked over the results of her investigation with Auggie.

 

"So far between the two of us, we've gotten half a dozen prescriptions for this Terlocyl stuff filled out at half a dozen different pharmacies, each for a totally different cover identity, and S&T has given us the same result every time." He said.

 

Annie nodded. "Every single one of them was spiked with the mystery drug."

 

"Which probably means that every dose of Terlocyl out there is tainted. Who makes it?"

Annie looked through some computer records. "It looks like the drug was developed by the Typhon Group."

 

"I've heard of them. They've gotten a lot of awards from humanitarian groups for their selling vaccines at cost to third-world countries. That doesn't sound like a group that would go into mind control."

 

"They could be patsies. Someone may have tampered with the formula without their knowledge."

 

"If we openly reveal what we've discovered now, that's definitely what they'll claim whether it's true or not. We need to dig into Typhon - without being caught. If we get caught snooping around without proof of wrongdoing, there's going to be a huge stink."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Annie and Auggie's investigation eventually led them to Dr Mary Brown, the chemist who created Terlocyl. And it quickly became apparent that Annie wasn't the only one interested in her.

 

"I don't know who this woman is, Auggie, but she's definitely tailing Brown, and I doubt she's part of a security detail." Annie said as she snapped a picture and uploaded it to her partner.

 

"I'll have someone in records see if they can find a match. Has the second tail marked you?" Auggie answered.

 

"I can't tell. She doesn't look like she has, but she could just be good at not openly reacting. I think I'd better act as if she had and break contact for now."

 

Annie slipped away through the crowds. Five minutes later, she paused and noticed something in her pocket.

 

"She definitely marked me, Auggie. She apparently had some accomplice slip me a note with a brush-pass while I was breaking contact." Annie opened the note. "It looks like a time and place, and what looks like a credential number." She read it off. "I'd say that our mystery woman or somebody she works with wants to talk to us."

 

"I'll run the number." Auggie said. "If it checks out we'll decide whether or not you should make the meet."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The credential number apparently belonged to Chloe O'Brien, one of the best agents of the CTU, who had dropped off the map after an incident in Russia. After discussing the matter with Auggie, the two decided that O'Brien had probably been sent on some covert assignment with her disappearance just being a cover. As a result, Annie found herself heading to the meeting to figure out what the CTU's interest in the Typhon Group was.

 

She was greeted by the mystery woman she had spotted tailing Dr Brown. "Agent Walker? I'm Victoria. I'm glad you decided to join us. This is John, and I'm sure you know who Chloe is." Victoria indicated the other two people in the room.

 

"Pleased to meet you. I take it that you asked me to come over so we could compare notes about Doctor Brown and the Typhon Group?" She replied.

 

"Pretty much," Chloe agreed. "Victoria here was backtracking the history of a late SHIELD agent who we know went over to HYDRA, trying to figure out when he was turned and how much he had compromised."

 

"Among the things that Garret had ended up doing during his career involved a number of incidents that ended up in the failure of several efforts to develop new drugs, and in some cases the drug companies themselves. Every single time the drug was intended to be a competitor to something developed by Doctor Brown for the Typhon Group." Victoria added. "I can't see any reason why SHIELD would care where people get their prescriptions from, but HYDRA might."

 

"Was one of the drugs Terlocyl?" Annie asked.

 

Chloe looked through some records on her laptop, and nodded.

 

"That might fit into my investigation, then." Annie told the others about the hypnotic that was included in the arthritis medicine.

 

"That means that at the very least Brown is HYDRA," John said. "Along with at least some of her immediate colleagues. Now the question is how deeply penetrated Typhon is."

 

"I might be able to figure it out if I can get into their servers," Chloe said. "But they have an air-gap security measure. Since they're not connected to the outside network, there's no way to get into them without physically accessing them. And I'd need a code sequencer to get into the computer room."

 

"Typhon's holding a big social event next week to drum up investors. We might be able to work out a plan to take advantage of that." John added.

 

"If you can get me a list of all the drugs this Garret wanted to ensure people were using, I can arrange for them all to be tested for this mystery hypnotic." Annie volunteered.

 

"You do that," Victoria said. "We'll contact you in three days about our plan to get into Typhon's archives."

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Annie's investigation into the other drugs on the list showed that they all contained the unknown hypnotic. This convinced Director Campbell to give her the green light for the attempt to access Typhon's records. And so, 'Anne Landwirt' and her 'husband' John found themselves attending Typhon's party for prospective investors.

 

While Annie made small talk with various other guests, John stalked Doctor Brown so casually that if she hadn't known what he was up to she would never have realized that he wasn't just mingling. She didn't even realize that he had lifted Brown's wallet until after he made a bathroom run and then put it back, and she was talking to the Doctor at the time, carefully recording her mannerisms with a digital camera built into a brooch she was wearing.

 

Now certain that Chloe had gotten a hold of Brown's sequencer long enough to make a copy, Annie began the second part of her role of this stage of the mission.

 

"Would it be possible to get a tour of your facilities?" She asked. "My husband and I like to see exactly what our money will be going to before we invest in a company."

 

"I've seen too many companies where the executives spend their investor's money on luxury retreats rather than something that will actually provide a return to risk my money without first knowing exactly what I'll be spending it on." John agreed.

 

"I think I might be able to arrange something along those lines." Doctor Brown said. "How can I get in touch with you to compare schedules?"

 

John handed over a business card. Given the purported wealth attributed to the Landwirt family in the utterly fictional background that had been carefully constructed for this mission, Annie seriously doubted that the management at Typhon would want to miss a chance to get their hands on some of it. They'd be contacted about the desired tour within a week.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A few days later, the Landwirts received an invitation to tour Typhon's main facility. As Annie and John drove to their rendezvous, Auggie tested the reception in the earbug his partner was wearing.

 

"Okay Annie, I'm online and I have some bio-chem certified analysts with me," He said "We'll be listening in to everything you hear and should be able to come up with enough intelligent questions to maintain your cover and help you buy enough time for the second team to complete their end of the mission. Good luck."

 

Annie didn't answer. The car was pulling into the parking lot. Within five minutes she would be in the belly of the beast, making certain Brown's eyes were on her so that Chloe could use the counterfeit sequencer she had made to access the servers.

 

Annie and John entered the building and were soon greeted by Doctor Brown and passed through security. Auggie flipped a switch to another channel. "Alpha team is in. Bravo team, you are go."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ten minutes later, a van bearing the markings of the cleaning contractor employed by Typhon pulled into the parking lot. An old man got out of the car and started slowly pushing a large cart full of cleaning equipment into the building, where he showed his ID to the guard and made his way to the elevator.

 

Once the elevator was moving, Willy Armitage hit the stop switch and opened a panel in the cart. A woman who looked for all the world like Doctor Brown crawled out.

 

"I'm glad I don't have to sneak both of you out this way." Willy said. "I'm not as young as I used to be."

 

The disguised Victoria closed the hidden compartment behind her. "I see the stories about your strength weren't exaggerated. Not many people could have moved that heavy a cart without drawing attention to how much it really weighed."

 

"You knew people who spoke of me?" Willy asked as he restarted the elevator.

 

"One of my teachers saw some of your work back in the sixties."

 

The elevator reached the proper floor, and the two left. Once they were outside the server room, they checked around to see if anyone else was coming. Upon seeing the coast was clear, Willy helped Chloe out of the second hidden compartment in the cart while Victoria unlocked the door with her forged sequencer. As the two women entered the server room, Willy got out some wet floor signs and started mopping. Once he spread enough water around, nobody would use that section of hallway if they could avoid it.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Once inside, Chloe quickly plugged her laptop into one of the computers and started working. It took her close to an hour, but she eventually was able to forge herself an admin level account and begin rummaging around through the files.

 

"It looks like every single one of the suspect drugs contains a substance called Hypnocin," She noted. "Any idea what that is?"

 

"Never heard of it before. Let's see if it has its own record." Victoria ordered.

 

It turned out it did, in a partition that most people with access to the records wouldn't have had a high enough access level to see, much less read.

 

"Chemical hypnotic... can be retained in the body's tissues almost indefinitely... allows high degree of control on subjects once buildup has reached a critical level. This is what we're looking for."

 

"Are there any samples of the drug here?"

 

"Yes, in a secure storage room two levels down. It looks like Doctor Brown has access there. Makes sense, since she's the one who invented this drug."

 

Victoria smiled coldly. "Good. Let me tell the others we're on plan C. Once they've started their half I'll grab the Hypnocin and make certain nobody realizes that we've got it. In the meantime, get copies of everything related to Hypnocin you can find and then get out. Sooner or later someone's going to realize how long Willy's been mopping that same hallway."

 

With that Victoria took out a cellphone, speed dialed a number, let it ring four times and then hung up.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Annie probably would have found the tour more interesting if she understood more of what her guide was talking about. Unfortunately, she was trained as a linguist, not a chemist, so most of what Doctor Brown said went right over her head. The link to the analysts back in Langley who would understand the lectures helped, but pretending that she actually understood what she was being told was still very challenging.

 

Her cellphone started vibrating. Annie counted four vibrations. That meant that she was to separate Doctor Brown from the group and keep her busy for a while.

 

Turning to John, she saw her 'husband' talking with the Director of the Typhon Group, who had worked out the potential magnitude of the investment the Landwirt family could potentially bring his company and had joined the tour to schmooze them for more funding.

 

"John, dear?" She asked. "Why don't you and the Director go and discuss the financial side of things while I talk science with the Doctor here?"

 

"That's a good idea," John agreed. "I can't speak High Science, and you don't know High Business. If we split up, we can each talk with people who speak our language without getting in each other's way."

 

The two of them were taken to adjoining conference rooms. As the analysts with Auggie started feeding her questions again, Annie rang Victoria's cell three times and hoped that the analysts could keep her in intelligent questions that she could correctly pronounce long enough to buy Victoria's team the time they needed.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Victoria's cell vibrated three times. Recognizing the signal that Walker had gotten Brown to stay in one place for a prolonged period of time, she left the server room and headed for the chemical storage room.

 

The records that Chloe had found included the exact locker that the Hypnocin was stored in. Victoria quickly found it and claimed the sealed bottle for herself.

 

One of the other people working in the storeroom noticed her taking the drugs. "Do you need the Hypnocin for something, Doctor Brown?" He asked.

 

"I just thought of a new use it for that I thought I'd try out," She said, smiling evilly. "Something I I'm surprised I didn't think of years ago." Then she left before he could inquire further.

 

Knowing that she had a limited amount of time to finish her task (Even though she ultimately needed to be witnessed acting suspiciously for the plan to work, it would have been nice for it to have happened a little later), Victoria hurried to the office of Typhon's director.

 

The director's secretary was busy with the printer, so Victoria was able to walk past her without drawing attention to herself. Once she was in the office, she proceeded to open every bottle in the wet bar at the side of the office and pour some Hypnocin in all of them. After resealing the liquor bottles, she put the Hypnocin inside her coat and took out something John had made for her before the mission started - a string of modified flash grenades. This she carefully installed inside a light fixture.

 

The secretary had returned to her desk by the time that Victoria finished in the office. "Doctor Brown?" She asked. "Shouldn't you be with the director and the Lindwarts right now?"

 

Victoria spun towards the secretary and addressed her in a voice as cold as ice. "I just stepped out a few minutes to address something I should have taken care of years ago. I suggest you just go along with the changes that will be coming soon. If you don't... well, let's just say that I can make certain that you do."

 

Victoria swept away before the secretary could say anything further and headed out of the building. As she headed down the stairwell, she peeled off the mask she was wearing and stuffed it inside her coat to avoid the notice of anyone who might come looking for Mary Brown after what 'she' had just been witnessed doing. Soon she was walking out one of the side doors and heading towards the van that she had ridden in on.

 

Ten minutes later, an old man pushed his cart out of the building and into the parking lot. Victoria opened the back door to the van, helped Willy push the cart into the van, and then helped Chloe out of the cart.

 

As Chloe got out of the cart, Willy looked at Victoria closely. "I've seen you before."

 

"I don't think we've ever met before today." Victoria objected.

 

"I didn't say that we'd met, only that I'd seen you. The teacher who told you about me was your father, wasn't it, Miss Hand?" Willy countered as the three all took their seats. "Rollin was a good friend of mine. And he didn't take the news of your death well. I would know - I attended the funeral. How is it that you're still alive?"

 

Victoria didn't bother trying to deny her identity any further as Willy started up the van and drove it away. "I didn't trust Ward - Garrett hadn't just been his SO, he had also personally recruited him for the academy. So when Ward requested to be part of the guard force sending Garrett to the Fridge, I swapped myself out with an experimental gynoid body double called a Life Model Decoy. Ward murdered the robot and freed his mentor, leaving me perfectly safe hundreds of miles away.

 

"Father always told me that most people recognize others by their most distinguishing feature. That's why I always dyed the tips of my hair red. Once I washed it out, everyone assumed that since I wasn't the woman with the red-tipped hair, I wasn't Victoria Hand. Then I slipped out with everyone else when Coulson ordered the Hub evacuated."

 

"That doesn't change the fact that your father hasn't been doing so well since he learned of your apparent murder. The only thing that cheered him up a little was breaking your killer."

 

Victoria sighed. Losing touch with loved ones was always a problem with deep-cover assignments. "You can tell him I'm alive if you want - but only him, and only in person. So long as the world thinks I'm dead, HYDRA will think I'm dead as well, and that means they won't expect me to be working against them."

 

Willy nodded. As the van drove into the distance, Victoria dialed John's phone, letting him know they were all clear.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The man who was currently calling himself John Landwirt was listening to the Director give a high-level explanation of what he was planning to do with the company if he had access to the capital necessary to expand his business when he felt his cell phone vibrate. Counting vibrations, he recognized the signal that Chloe and Victoria had completed their missions. It was time for the endgame.

 

After patiently waiting for the Director to finish his speech, he said "I think that's about all I needed to know. I'll see how my wife is doing. Once we've discussed what our decision will be, we'll come to your office to let you know what it is."

 

John headed over to the other conference room and knocked on the door.

 

"How are things going on your end, dear?" He asked.

 

"I think we're about ready to wrap up." Walker's voice returned.

 

The Director followed behind them. "Doctor Brown, once the Landwirts have finished their discussion, please escort them to my office."

 

The Typhon employees left the 'couple' alone to talk. John began a meaningless discussion about investments while typing out a message on his phone.

 

VCW CLEAR. MA.

 

Walker read the message and joined in the discussion as she wrote her response.

 

WHAT NEXT

 

John cleared his screen and typed in his reply

 

MEET W DIR. LET ME TALK. DONT DRINK.

 

Walker nodded in understanding. Jack prepped his phone to be ready to dial a specific number and then the two left the conference room. The were quickly escorted to the Director's office. Then the Doctor excused herself to return to her work.

 

"Well, Mr Landwirt," Greeted the Director as they entered the office. "Have you made your decision."

 

"We have," John said. "We'll be meeting with our bankers next week to discuss our investments for the next quarter. The Typhon Group will be among them."

 

"Excellent! Why don't we have a drink to celebrate our new relationship?"

 

The Director poured three glasses of scotch from his private bar. John and Walker raised their glasses to their mouths and mimed drinking, but did not allow the liquor to pass their lips.

 

"I think your scotch might have gone off," John said politely. "There's an odd aftertaste to it... almost chemical."

 

"Really? I haven't noticed that before." As the Director examined his own drink more closely, John pushed the send button on his phone. Upon receiving the call, the detonator for the string of flash grenades Victoria had hidden in the lights went off, triggering a series of blinding flashes of light.

 

As the three people blinked rapidly to restore their vision, John helpfully suggested, "You might want to spend some of that investment on updating your wiring."

 

The Director paled as his mind started drawing the connections that Jack wanted him to draw. "You might have a point. This company was founded shortly after the Second World War. Some of the utility connections might still date back to that era. I think I'll call a contractor to look into that. If you'll excuse me..."

 

Taking that as the dismissal that it was, John and Walker left the office and made their way out of the building. As they drove away, John smiled at a job well done. Typhon would assume that all the missing drugs went into the drinks and other illicit uses for internal power plays, and would never realize who had really stolen the drugs and why until it was much too late.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Once everyone had gotten clear of Typhon, they regrouped at the location where they had first met. There Chloe made a second copy of the files she had taken for the CIA. Annie and Willy took their copies of the files and the remaining Hypnocin with them when they returned to report in.

 

"The formula in the files and that sample matches what we found in all those drugs we tested." One of the analysts reported.

 

"These records also seem to have detailed reports specifying how long the typical person needs to be on this stuff before they can start subverting your mind." Another said.

 

"That might be why all the Hypnocin-spiked drugs are for chronic medical conditions," Annie mused. "Since you never really get better from them, you have to take the medicine regularly for the rest of your life."

 

"And the reason that the medicines are all prescription is so that they can keep track of who's using them and how long they've been unknowingly taking Hypnocin," Willy joined in. "I've got a large file here listing names, dates, and estimates on whether or not they've taken enough to be controllable. It looks like they update their estimates monthly."

 

"Pass me a copy of that file," Auggie said. "I'll cross check it against people with clearances. That should allow us to get most of the security risks this stuff has created in one sweep."

 

"Sure. It might even close some of your existing cases. Some of these people have been on Typhon's drugs for more than twenty years now, so... Dear God."

 

Willy stared at one name on the list.

 

"We always wondered how that could have happened. How he could have turned traitor. This. This is how."

 

The old man who was once the world's greatest weightlifter clenched his fists, wishing that he could do that around the neck of Doctor Mary Brown.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Doctor Brown wasn't sure what had happened the day before. At first it looked like she was about to snag the Typhon group a new source investment money, which they could use to expand their operations overseas and start introducing people in Europe to the wonders of Hypnocin, at which point HYDRA would slowly but surely acquire thousands of more people they could twist into puppets at will.

 

Then after the Landwirts had left, the Director had started acting strangely. He had called several people in her department to his office without asking her to join in the discussions. Soon after it became apparent that this wasn't an oversight; she was being deliberately left out. As the Typhon Group's top researcher, this was something she was not used to. This was why she was relieved to finally be called to the Director's office that afternoon.

 

Mary wasn't the only person who had been called in. There were also two men from security and someone she didn't recognize.

 

"Ah, glad to see you could make it, Doctor." The Director said. "This is Mr. Bakshi. He's part of the management of our parent company. The incident yesterday was sufficiently sensitive that I requested that he come in as a neutral third party to verify our findings before we acted."

 

"Incident, sir?" It seemed that more had been kept from Mary than she had thought.

 

"Yes, Doctor Brown." Mr. Bakshi said. "It seems that someone stole some Hypnocin from storage yesterday and placed it in the contents of the Director's private bar. They also rigged his lights to produce the flashes necessary to trigger the drug.

 

"The Director looked into who had accessed both the storage area and his office yesterday, and found someone who had done both. I personally double-checked his findings to make sure that the witnesses hadn't been influenced under Hypnocin to implicate an innocent party. The witness statements also match up with the security records of people badging into the storeroom."

 

The guards moved to block the door as Bakshi continued. "I think you know who that person is."

 

Things clicked into place in Mary's mind. "Y-You think I did this?" She protested "But that's impossible! I spent half the day escorting the Landwirts around. The Director was with me for most of it!"

 

"And then you and I separated when Mrs Landwirt took you aside to discuss technical details while I talked about the business end of things with her husband." The Director pointed out. "You could easily have claimed you needed to use the restroom, stepped out, and drugged my liquor before coming back.

 

"The computer logs recorded you entering the storeroom. We have witnesses who saw you taking the Hypnocin and leaving the Director's office a few minutes later. We also know what you said to those witnesses," Bakshi concluded. "Your attempt to take over the Typhon Group failed, Doctor. I suggest you come with us. Otherwise... we'll just have to make you comply."

 

Mary bolted the moment the guards reached for her. She didn't stop running until she got to her car. Glad that she had always taken care to stay in shape, she gunned the engine and sped out of the parking lot. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew that her employers were now her enemies. If she wanted to stay alive, she would have to either find someplace they would never find her, or find someone willing to protect her.

 

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Director Campbell looked over Annie's report. "Good work. Homeland Security is already at work investigating the drugged personnel around the country to see if they've been forced to compromise national security and suspending their clearances until we can find a way to flush the Hypnocin from their systems. The FDA and FBI are currently assembling a task force to do a full-scale investigation into the Typhon Group, including all their other drug lines. I expect they'll have warrants for the arrests of everyone named in the files you secured by this time next week."

 

"Thank you, Director." Annie responded.

 

"There is one odd thing, however. I just got word from the director of the CTU. It seems that Agent O'Brien's disappearance wasn't a cover. She really is AWOL, and has been ever since she was caught up in that incident in Russia with the renegade agent Jack Bauer."

 

Annie's eyes widened as connections formed in her mind. Jack was a variant name of John. And given the English meaning of the name John had used...

 

"Do you have any pictures of Jack Bauer, ma'am?"

 

Campbell called for a copy of Bauer's file. A few minutes later, Annie was examining his photograph. "It's not a perfect match, but given that he and O'Brien had a disguise expert with them, they could have easily altered his appearance enough that nobody would recognize him from a casual glance."

 

The director quickly reached for her phone. "The CTU needs to know this right away. Half of the agencies in the country want to extradite Bauer back to Russia for what he pulled, and the rest just want to shoot him themselves."

 

Seeing that the Director was now focused on other matters, Annie excused herself. But she had a feeling that Bauer, O'Brien, and whoever Victoria was were now far enough away from Washington that any efforts to apprehend them would be a waste of time.

 

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Nicholas Fury, former Director of SHIELD, looked over the files that his Secret Warriors had brought him and smiled.

 

"I'd say that the Typhon Group will be removed from the list of HYDRA's assets before too long. But I think we'd better move our operations to somewhere else. There are too many people in the Washington area who might be able to recognize Jack, and if Armitage was able to identify you, it's possible that others will given enough time." Fury got up to speak with Daisy. A few minutes later, the plane they were in lifted off.

 

"O'Brien, I want you to start looking into Typhon's business connections. It's possible that some of them might also be connected to HYDRA."

 

"Shouldn't we be doing something about Doctor Brown first? She's still out there, and even if she can't work for HYDRA anymore, she could easily end up selling the Hypnocin formula to some third party and cause a lot of trouble." Chloe asked.

 

Victoria smirked as she recalled a certain name in one of the files. "I doubt she'll be able to survive long enough to try that. Once those files get out, HYDRA won't be the only ones after her head."

 

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**One week later...**

 

Dr Brown cowered in the motel room she was hiding in. She didn't have the slightest notion how she could have been filmed removing the Hypnocin sample from the storage room, or how it had ended up in those drinks, but regardless of how, her career at HYDRA was now over. They now believed her to be a traitor who had tried to use her own creation to seize control. She had been forced to send a message to the US Government offering the details of the Hypnocin plot in exchange for protection. Hopefully they would send someone to pick her up soon. Otherwise she would have to move again to avoid HYDRA's enforcers.

 

Someone knocked on the door.

 

"Who is it?" She asked, trying to hide the fear in her voice and failing rather badly.

 

"Would you be interested in purchasing a copy of the Encyclopedia Americana?" A man's voice responded.

 

That was the code phrase she had attached to her offer to defect. Since it had been years since encyclopedias were distributed on hard copy, and decades since anyone had ever sold them door-to-door (And never at motels), nobody would have guessed it. She unlocked the door. A dark haired man entered.

 

"Doctor Brown?" He asked.

 

"Yes. Are you sure you can get me out of here without HYDRA tracking us?"

 

"Don't worry miss, I was trained by the best in the business." The man's eyes dimmed slightly with reminisce. "There was hardly a single crisis of the late sixties and early seventies that he didn't have a hand in resolving. I can think of half a dozen past and present heads of state that owe him their lives or positions off the top of my head, and never once asked for more than a handshake in return. He didn't even collect photographs of those handshakes. Jim Phelps was possibly the single greatest unsung hero this country has ever known.

 

"Then, about twenty years ago, he changed. He murdered several of his teammates and tried to steal classified information that would have crippled American intelligence operations around the world. I ultimately had to kill him, never quite understanding what had made him become a traitor to his country."

 

Dr Brown was starting to wonder why he was going on about this.

 

"Imagine my surprise when another of Jim's former colleagues came to me about a week ago with records proving that his heart medicine was made from a formula that included a drug named Hypnocin. A drug invented by you." The man's voice was cold as his eyes narrowed.

 

Brown's eyes flickered around as she realized what was about to happen, but the only way out of the room was through the man.

 

"Y-you can't do this!" She protested. "You couldn't hope to get away with it!"

 

"I've gotten away with a lot worse, with my country's blessings." He countered. "By the time I'm finished in here, nobody will be able to prove that your former colleagues in HYDRA hadn't beaten me here. I might get chewed out for failing my mission, but since the CIA already has everything you could possibly tell us about Hypnocin, nothing much will come of it."

 

Ethan Hunt removed a gun from his coat. "You didn't just kill the finest man I ever knew, you twisted his soul and forever tainted his legacy. This is for Jim, you bitch."

 

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A/N: Mary 'Karisma' Brown is a minor Fantastic Four villain. She was a chemist who invented a mind control compound and tried to use it to seize control of the team, among others, but was thwarted by Sue Storm. The Typhon Group is a highly reputable pharmaceutical firm that serves as a front for a HYDRA chemical weapons facility.

 

Stark actually mentions the existence of Life Model Decoys in Avengers, even if none provably appear. So the method Victoria used to escape death is possible.

 

Bauer is German for farmer or peasant. Landwirt is another German word with a similar translation.

 

My thanks to kiyone4ever for the idea that turned into this chapter.

 

RIP Leonard Nimoy, AKA The Great Paris March 26, 1931 — February 27, 2015.


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